LEGISLATING IN THE AFTERMATH: REASSESSING THE 2015 JUVENILE JUSTICE AMENDMENT THROUGH MORAL PANIC THEORY

Legal reform in India usually moves slowly. Bills sit around for years while committees deliberate and consensus gets built inch by inch. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2015, did not follow that pattern. Section 15 of the Act required the Juvenile Justice Board to assess whether a child aged sixteen or above accused of a heinous offence had the mental and physical capacity to commit it and understood its consequences and to weigh the circumstances of the offence, with help from psychologists where needed. Depending on that assessment, the child could be sent to a Children's Court and tried, in effect, as an adult. This was a real break from the past. For fifteen years under the 2000 Act, no child under eighteen could be tried in the ordinary criminal system, full stop. That line moved within about two years of one case entering the public imagination.